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This article by Kevin Gannon would be ideal to share with faculty developing or teaching a hybrid or online course for the first time.

"an average student who participates in online discussion will score 25 percentile points higher on course exams than an average student who participates in classroom discussion"

This is a handy rubric to assess the suitability of e-learning tools for teaching and learning. Criteria cover functionality; accessibility; technical (e.g., LMS integration); mobile design; privacy/rights; and social, teaching and cognitive presence.

Article about a new non profit for Active Learning. http://aalasinternational.org/. They also have a free publication called the Flipped Learning Review. http://flr.flglobal.org/

Key finding: "Our data suggest that inserting short summaries into existing course videos is a simple and facile way to improve student recall of course contents." Thirty-second lecture summaries at the midpoint and end of lecture videos were correlated with significantly better learner performance on related quizzes. This was true if the lecture summary was delivered by the course instructor but not if it was delivered by a "guest." (Note: The average video length was approx. 10 minutes.)

Key finding: "A strong majority of those who have taught online, 71 percent, say doing so has helped them develop skills and practices that have improved their teaching both online and in person. More than seven in 10 say online teaching has enabled them to think more critically about how to engage students with content, better use multimedia content and better use the learning management system."

Great blog post about the critical need to align content with objectives in adaptive learning and the time and effort required to do so.

Summarizes legal basis for accessible online educational materials and provides tips and key links to aid instructors in moving toward Universal Design for Learning.

"Instructional designers, like web developers in the '90s, historically had expertise in conveying content through a limited set of tools and platforms, such as a learning management system (LMS). LX designers, in contrast, merge design-thinking principles with curriculum development and the application of emerging technologies to help faculty tailor content to student behaviors and preferences. It cuts across disciplines and moves beyond the LMS: LX designers embrace graphic design, multimedia production, research-based standards and social media. They are partners to faculty throughout the program and course development process."

"The findings suggest that a new role, the life skill promoter, has emerged. Furthermore, analysis of the remaining roles (pedagogical, designer, social, technical and managerial) showed that: (i) online instructors are, first and foremost, pedagogues; (ii) the design of the particular online program influences the pedagogical and designer roles and; (iii) the managerial role has declined in importance over the years due to the development of more intuitive and transparent online scenarios from the beginning of the course onward."

As online courses continue to gain in popularity at colleges and universities throughout the country, knowledge about the effectiveness of this mode of instruction, relative to that of traditional, face-to-face courses, becomes increasingly important. (An update to the 2010 DOE report showing no significant difference).

"One of the biggest misunderstandings about online learning is that it has to be limited to things that can be done in front of a computer screen. Instead, we need to reimagine online courses as something that can enable the interplay between offline activities and digital augmentation. . . . We need to focus . . . more on finding ways to robustly capture evidence of offline learning that can be validated and critiqued at scale by peers and experts online."

"The case for learning out loud extends beyond the development of effective communication skills. An asynchronous, multimodal learning environment that invites students to verbally converse with one another has been shown to improve the social and emotional elements of learning." (also see http://www.slideshare.net/brocansky/learning-outloudsept2014)

wb: Thought this a very useful (+short!) discussion of the new learning that is emerging thanks to computers. Filled with tons of great links to online resources and teaching game examples I hadn't heard of before.

Example of moving a Math course online and creating community by getting students to record themselves explaining solutions to problems